


sing in me

by casualbird



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Pre-Timeskip | Academy Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Storytelling, The Odyssey References, more than references but w/e, what's better than this? just guys bein dudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:15:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22307020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/casualbird/pseuds/casualbird
Summary: “It’s pretty cute, you know, how much you love those old stories. You just light up when you talk about them. So I suppose... it’d be a favor to you, but I’d get just as much out of it if I told you a new one.”On a rare, quiet afternoon, Claude spins his sweet Ashe a tale.
Relationships: Ashe Duran | Ashe Ubert/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 16
Kudos: 73





	sing in me

The library is a silent place, generally, but not when they are there. Not when they decide they’ve finished reading, when they slip from their desks onto the ancient, worn carpet, when Ashe lays his head in Claude’s lap, where he’s finding it belongs.

When Claude tangles his fingers in Ashe’s hair, smiles softly, wryly at him, asks him what he’s learned.

“W-well, I’ve just been looking for new knight’s tales, you know? There’re so many books here... but a lot of them are--well, I’ve either already heard them or read them, or they’re just... kind of dry and academic. I haven’t had much luck.”

Claude cocks his head. “That so? You _are_ a little bookworm. I bet you’ve heard every last fairy tale in Fódlan by now.”

Ashe colors a little, that apple-pink shade that Claude cannot possibly get enough of. “Uh, I don’t know! Maybe? I do read a lot...”

“It’s pretty cute, you know, how much you love those old stories. You just light up when you talk about them. So I suppose... it’d be a favor to you, but I’d get just as much out of it if I told you a new one.”

Ashe giggles, soft lips parting around the chipped, crooked edges of his teeth. It’s such a precious smile, so easy and so earnest. 

“You have one? Oh, please, Claude, tell me! I’d love to hear it from you. Even if I have already read it.”

Claude has no idea how the boy manages to be so damn forthright, but it captivates him every time, grasps his cool, collected heart and turns it into--something resembling a peeled tomato. Delicate, dripping, liable to make a wretched mess.

It’s a terrible, inconvenient, disarming feeling. Really, Claude’s a damn fool for chasing it, for constantly giving in to the impulse to spoil this boy.

“I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t have seen this one. It’s not from Fodlan, you see. It’s--when I was young, I had a nurse from Almyra. She told it to me.”

And that’s not a lie, per se. In fact, it’s entirely truthful. It just... omits that the Almyran nurse was one of an entirely Almyran palace staff, in an Almyran palace, _in Almyra._ Anyway, Claude doesn’t let himself feel too awful about it. Ashe is a precious thing, sidling closer every day to Claude’s heart--but there are some cards that he plays even closer.

Anyway. Ashe’s eyes are sparkling, the way that eyes only ever seem to do in the sweet romantic tales he reads, with princesses swept off their feet by dashing knights. Claude can’t make him wait just because he’s got--silly things, like _reticence_ and _hedged bets._

“Ready?” he asks, and Ashe can only nod, practically quivering in his lap, almost giddy.

“Alright, I-- I’ll see if I can remember how it goes, exactly. It’s a whole thing, it’s mean to be sung... you won’t be mad that I can’t play the lyre, will you?”

Ashe is looking up at him like he hangs the moon and stars. Like he doesn’t even know what a lyre _is,_ like it’s the furthest thing from his mind just then.

So Claude smirks, and then smiles for real, and then starts.

“Sing in me, Muse,” he begins, with a practiced intonation. “And through me, tell the story of that man, skilled in all ways of contending...”

He trails off, then, for a moment. Rifles through his words, tries to piece them back together, like decoding a spy’s letter. Ashe is rapt, face glazed with a darling childish wonder, and Claude will _drop dead_ if he disappoints him.

“The wanderer,” Claude continues, finally catching the end of the thread, “harried for years on end, after he... plundered the stronghold, on the proud height of Troy.”

He opens his eyes, looks down once he’s done, and the sight that greets him makes him wish he could remember the entire poem verbatim. Wish he had a chorus of poets behind him, a high bonfire, an orchestra of flutes and lyres.

Ashe is positively beaming at him. His hands are clasped together, as if he can barely restrain himself from bursting into applause, from leaping out of Claude’s lap into a standing ovation.

“Thank you!” he says, and he’s losing his breath like he’s run a mile, even though all he’s done is lie flat, listen to one stanza of one poem. “Tell me more?”

Claude laughs, feels himself blushing. “That’s about all I remember word-for-word,” he admits, one hand rising to cover the back of his neck. “But I can sum it up for you, if you want! It’s a bit of a long one, so I might not have all the details straight...”

The pure captivation on Ashe’s face tells Claude that he wouldn’t care if he’d forgotten the entire thing, if he had to make it up wholesale. That it doesn’t matter, that not much of anything matters when he gets to lie here like this, suspended in a lazy afternoon, and listen to a story. Have his hair played with. Be _young,_ like he’s never quite been able to, for an hour or so.

And Claude is so--so touched that Ashe wants to do that with _him of all people_ that--damn. He wouldn’t mind making the whole thing up either.

“Alright,” he says, voice tripping over his own fondness. “So the man of many ways--his name is Odysseus, and he’s the king of this place far away, this little island, Ithaka. And he’s just finished this nasty war, after ten years of attrition, at the city of Troy...”

He goes on like that, over all the old touchstones of the tale, all the milestones of Odysseus’ journey. The curse of the sea god, the gilded-cage isle of Kalypso, the harbor of the hideous, ravening Laistrygonians. The treacherous strait of Messina, the succor at Nausicaa’s palace. The return home, the old dog, the suitors, the contest. Claude isn’t certain if he’s got them all in order, if he’s forgotten names or flubbed details, but if it’s good enough for Ashe...

And it is, it absolutely is. He lies there slack-jawed, hardly remembering to breathe, to blink. Completely silent, too, the way he gets when he’s studying, when he’s tending to the little pots of herbs that line his windowsill. Utterly, beautifully transfixed: when Claude glances down at him from time to time, checking--well, he can never look for long, because every time he sees the wonderment on Ashe’s face, the peeled tomato of his heart begins to shiver, to drip its juice into his cupped hands.

But when he’s finished--when the sun is low outside the library, when Odysseus has split the arrow, when he’s run off or murdered all the suitors, (Claude can’t quite recall) he’s got no choice. So he steels himself, paints a little smirk on his face, feels it falter the instant he sees him.

“What d’you think?” Claude asks, knowing the answer, just wanting to hear it from him.

And Ashe hums, sweetly, a little joke--as if he doesn’t know what to say, as if he doesn’t think Claude hangs the moon. “Well--it was really great, Claude, thank you! I--I liked the part with the Cyclops, best, the ‘nobody’ thing... gah, I can’t thank you enough!”

“I wonder, though, Claude-- has anyone ever told you that you’re like him? Odysseus, I mean.”

Claude’s eyebrows knit, his smirk falling like a popped souffle. He’s not heard that one before, has never been... _heroic._ Has just always--like everyone--been doing his best.

But Ashe just keeps smiling. “You know--some people might say he’s not honorable, or, or knightly... but he’s clever! He lives by his wits! And he cares about people. And... well,” he goes on, voice slumping into a softly flustered mumble, fingers knitting over his chest. “Those are some things I like about you.”

And Claude--silver-tongued Claude, skilled in all the ways of contending--has absolutely not a thing to say.

The tomato is--squashed. Splattered all over the inside of his chest. It’s going to be a nightmare to clean up.

But he just smiles, gathers up his wits like pick-up sticks, takes Ashe’s bow-callused hand in his. Lifts it to his mouth, almost gallantly, and lays a kiss on his ink-stained palm.

“You’re cute,” he says, trying not to sound as dumb as he feels. “Let’s go get something to eat.”

And Ashe giggles at him, as if he’s got no idea what he does to him. Unless--unless that is a little smugness, right in the corner of his eye.

If Claude’s a clever man, Ashe might just be his match.

**Author's Note:**

> hello everyone! i hope you enjoyed this! the headcanon that the odyssey gets told in almyra (since it's fantasy turkey and the epic originated in that area) got its claws in me and wouldn't leave me alone!
> 
> the translation i used to write this fic is by robert fitzgerald, though generally i prefer emily wilson's. however i did leave the wilson version in my dorm, and the fitzgerald has more of a high fairytale sound anyway.
> 
> so! if you have strong feelings about which translation of the odyssey is best, if you liked the fic, if you _didn't_ like the fic and would like to start a blood feud with me, let me know! and if you feel so inclined (and are of age), come visit me on [twitter!](https://twitter.com/bird_scribbles)


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